Thackeray as an Illustrator—The 'North British Review' on Thackeray—Illustrations to 'Men of Character'—The 'Whitey-brown Paper Magazine'—'Comic Tales,' illustrated by Thackeray—Allusions to Caricature Drawing found throughout his writings—Skits on Fashion—Titmarsh on 'Men and Clothes'—Bohemianism in youth—Hatred of conventionality—Sketches of Contemporary Habits and Manners—Imaginative Illustrations to Romances—Skill in Ludicrous Parody—Burlesque of the 'Official Handbook of Court and State.'
Although Thackeray must go down to posterity as an author, and, of necessity, in that character will hold his own as one of the very greatest of English writers, his earnest ambition sought occupation in the career of an artist, and, as must be familiar to our readers, the desire for this distinction retained its hold on his spirit through life.
As a humorous designer we must accord him a position of eminence, and the characteristic originality of his pencil certainly entitles Thackeray to an honourable place in the front rank of fanciful draughtsmen.
The illustrations which he supplied in profusion for the embellishment of his own writings have a certain happy harmony with the thread of the story, which probably no other hand could have contributed. In the field of design, especially of the grotesque order, his imagination was singularly fertile, and the little figures with which he loved to appositely point the texts of his week-day sermons and moralities strike forcibly by their ingenuity and by the aptness of their conception.
'He draws well,' insists the author of an unusually thoughtful and sound paper on Thackeray;[31] 'his mouths and noses, his feet, his children's heads, all his ugly and queer "mugs," are wonderful for expression and good drawing. With beauty of man or woman he is not so happy; but his fun is, we think, even more abounding and funnier in his cuts than in his words. He is, as far as we can recollect, the only great author who illustrated his own works. This gives a singular completeness to the result. When his pen has said its say, then comes his pencil and adds its own felicity.'
The article just referred to, which we cannot recommend too highly, is written in a spirit of such just excellence as could only have been arrived at after long personal acquaintance with Thackeray's higher qualities. The same number contains the facsimile of a remarkably clever and characteristic pen-and-ink drawing in the humourist's best style, which was originally sent to a friend in the North in place of a letter—a practice not unusual with him. One corner of the little picture contains a 'memorandum of account' to this effect:—
'To a new plum-coloured coat.